regressing Page 17 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
All 2,208 World Cup Goals, By Minute Scored
With kickoff on Thursday, The Economist has put together a neat chart showing when all 2,208 World Cup goals have been scored, by minute....
The Myth Of The Myth Of The Hot Hand
Adapted from the new book, How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking....
Study: Napoleon Complex Is Real; Shorter NBA Refs Call More Fouls
A new study in the Journal of Sports Economics finds that shorter NBA refs may call more fouls, in an excellent manifestation of the Napoleon Complex. Paul Gift and Ryan Rodenberg looked at 4,463 regular season games from 2008 to 2012, and—controlling for variables like race and experience*—found a ...
Everything You Know About Cramps Is Wrong, And Gatorade Is Full Of Shit
It looked bad, LeBron getting Paul Pierced off the court, a Finals opener sliding wetly to an uneventful end, Gatorade trolling down from the ramparts of for-profit pseudo-science....
Why Do NBA Playoff Games Take So Long?
While it's common knowledge (and a common complaint) that the NBA playoffs as a whole take a long time to complete, it's often the case that the games themselves take a long time as well. Part of this is due to overtimes being (slightly) more frequent in the playoffs than in the regular season—6.0 p...
The Spurs Are Too Good For Advanced Stats To Measure
A curious stat popped up on ESPN's Stats & Info feed yesterday. "Tony Parker sat nearly as much as he played this season and the @spurs were slightly better per 100 poss. without him," it read. This says more about Spurs, and the stats we use, than it does about Parker. ...
Which Hockey Leagues Have The Most Fights?
The NHL has a lot more fights than, say, the NFL, but how does it stack up against other levels of hockey competition? To find out, Simon Garnier of Graph Zoo pulled data from the (hilariously '90s) site dropyourgloves.com and put together a neat graphic on "fights per game" across almost 100 active...
Which Countries Get Carded The Most At The World Cup?
Quartz has crunched the numbers on World Cup penalties, counting all the yellow and red cards for every squad back to 1970. Slovenia comes in number one, racking up 20 cards in their six World Cup games (3.33 per game). Peru was the least penalized, with nine cards in 13 games (0.69 per game)....
All 204 World Cup Shootout Attempts, In One Chart
With the tournament starting next week, the BBC has put together a neat little guide on "what makes the perfect World Cup shootout penalty." The graphic above—showing the location and result of all 204 World Cup shootout attempts—is just one of several neat visuals; go check them all out....
Watch Football Players Get Taller And Heavier Over 90 Years Of The NFL
NFL height/weight data has been visualized before, but a new animation by WYNC's Noah Veltman may be the snappiest version yet. Over on his site you can watch the size of NFL players steadily expand through the early '70s, stagnate, and then spike again—mostly in terms of weight—in the late '80s....
Dan Marino Says He Sued The NFL By Accident, Withdrawing Lawsuit
Yesterday, word made its way out that Dan Marino would join a suit against the NFL over the effects of brain trauma suffered during his career. Today, word from the Sun Sentinel is, Whoops, my bad guys. ...
Dan Marino Sues NFL Over Concussions
Noted jury-duty-skipper and production-assistant-humper Dan Marino, as well as 14 more former players, joined the more than 5,000 players suing the NFL over the effects of concussions during their time in the league. ...
Better Ways To Name Hurricanes, Ranked
There's a paper making its way around the internet today that puts forth that hurricanes that are named after women have been historically more deadly than those named after men. There's an appealing simplicity of stupid to this—people associate men with strength, and get killed by hurricanes becaus...
Damn, Serge
Ibaka has played 65 minutes in two games this series, though not all overlapping with Duncan, obviously. ...
Have Spelling Bee "Winning Words" Always Been So Obscure?
Arvind Mahankali won the 2013 National Spelling Bee on "knaidel," a type of dumpling. The winning word the year prior was "guetapens," before that "cymotrichous," and before that "stromuhr." Have bee-winning words always been this insane, or is this a recent development? ...
Which Sports Network Wastes The Most Space With Its Scores Ticker?
When ESPN introduced the "BottomLine" as an experiment on its new ESPN2 channel nearly 20 years ago, few expected the feature to become as ubiquitous in sports broadcasting as it has. Today, nearly every cable sports net has its own version of the scores ticker, and in an industry that clings to con...
What's Roy Hibbert's Impact On Defense?
Offensively, Roy Hibbert has been all over the place these playoffs. Well, "all over the place" isn't exactly right, he's paired a couple of good games with many terrible ones, adding his fourth zero-point outing in Monday's loss. But even at his offensive worst, it's important to remember that Hibb...
Stephen Hawking's Mathematical Guide To Winning The World Cup
Stephen Hawking, for whatever reason, spent some time digging up soccer stats for Paddy Power that could help nudge the English side to a World Cup win. It's fascinating, mostly for the premise of Stephen Hawking being mixed up with Paddy Power. ...
Here's A New Attempt At Gauging The Defensive Impact Of NBA Players
The defensive impact of individual NBA players is hard to measure, as it's so intertwined with their teammates' performance. Austin Clemens, undeterred, has taken an ambitious shot with his new Adjusted Impact by Court Location model, which attempts to parse out individual impacts on opponent shot s...